Film Carew: Nebraska, Le Week-End, Gloria

NEBRASKA

It's another Alexander Payne road movie! His sixth film, Nebraska, finds a hapless, stereo-salesman son (Will Forte, all pained sighs and rumpled dorkiness) roped into taking his aging, ornery father (Bruce Dern, eyes wild and hair electric) on an ill-advised odyssey through heartland America. Eyeballs deep in senility and booze, mule-stubborn Dern is convinced he's won a million in a clearing house sweepstakes, no matter how much Forte, supercilious sibling Bob Odenkirk, nor long-suffering matriarch June Squibb tell him it's a plain-as-day scam. And, so, father and son embark on a final, quixotic quest for the old man (“he needs something to live for”), heading out on the highway to Nebraska, but really journeying into the past.

Dern ain't much of a travelling companion: he's taciturn and monosyllabic, easily confused, prone to wandering off on benders. Even in the soupy haze of early Alzheimer's, deadbeat dad remains an unrepentant alcoholic. “I served my country, I pay my taxes,” he howls, defiant, “So I drink a lot? Goddamn it, so what!” Yet, when pops takes a drunken spill on some railroad tracks, he splits his head open and waylays his best laid plans. And, rather than cashing that cheque by Friday, Forte and Dern find themselves at a weekend-long family-reunion, at which Squibb and Odenkirk eventually show up. For the now-grown sons, it's a chance to discover that their parents were once kids: that once they were young and foolish, they courted, and went to war. And that even their dad's drinking has its roots in a hard-knocks childhood, raised by a hard-ass father who turned out a whole set of matching, rarely-speaking sons.

Payne made his name as a deft director of comedy (1999's Election, his second feature, is still his best), and Nebraska smirks wryly at the Soup & Salad Bar kitsch of middle America; makes deadpan drollery out of tableaux depicting unmoving men in armchairs staring blankly at the TV. Squibb hits the high-comic notes in a trip back to Dern's family plot, flashing her knickers at long-departed souls who once “wanted in [her] pants”; and scenes in which smarmy family/friends shakedown Dern for his newfound cash - “usually a person has to die before the vultures start circling!” Squibb screeches - border on hijinks.

But, shooting frontier America in the stark monochrome of digital black-and-white, Payne strikes a tragicomic tone that's most effective when it leans towards tragedy. Nebraska hits home when Dern finally comes back home, the family wandering through the crumbling remains of his childhood house; the ruined structure a symbol for his ruined mind. His current days may be cloudy - and numbered - but the past is still there, upstairs, in crystal clarity. When they step into his parents' old bedroom, Dern offers, matter-of-factly, that he used to get whipped if he was found in there. “I guess no one's going to whip me now,” he shrugs; the moment a poignant instant of humanity that shrines brighter than any Nebraska's comedy.

LE WEEK-END

“I knew this trip would be a fucking disaster!” Jim Broadbent seethes, he and wife Lindsay Duncan barely off the EuroStar, on a romantic weekend in Paris, before their bickering turns vicious. They're celebrating their 30-year anniversary, and back at the scene of their courtship, they're in a reflective mood: a pair of empty-nesters edging towards retirement age, suddenly filled with panic that their life has slipped away into mediocrity, resentment, resignation. Each still harbours dreams: Broadbent of writing “the great Cambridge novel”; Duncan of learning Italian, dancing the tango; both of indulging in some light S&M. But is holding tight to dreams, of hoping to change, futile in the face of human nature? Hanif Kureishi's script starts with a simple comic premise - Old Marrieds! - then unfolds the idea; studying the psychologies of dependency, of what it means to be devoted to someone for decades, even when you hate them. There are hints of our couple as generational symbols: aging Boomers, who feigned rebellion at university, became the sell-out establishment, now left to retire to a cushy pension of nostalgic pot-smoking to Nick Drake records. Yet, Le Week-end works best as neither broad portrait nor broad farce (despite its fondness for high-comic restaurant 'runners' and cutesy Bande à Parte references), but when it becomes a study of human insecurity; both within a marriage, and in a greater social setting. Jeff Goldblum swans in as an old pal, a loud American who's suddenly struck success, he an antagonist there to stir shit up. The final message is effectively reassuring - you can be old, and still stay young - but, along the way, Kureishi is unafraid of going to pleasingly-dark psychological places.

GLORIA

Not to be confused with John Cassevetes' iconic 1980 picture Gloria - nor the depressing 1999 remake, a thoroughly-witless vanity vehicle for then-star Sharon Stone - Sebastián Lelio's Gloria gives us a 58-year-old divorcée looking for love in all the wrong places. Played, with great grace and depth, by Chilean theatre vet Paulina García, the memorable lead character haunts singles-night dancefloors, hoping to fill her empty-nest loneliness with an affair to remember. She's yearning/burning for love, Into that yearning void steps the stuffy Sergio Hernández, a former naval officer - read: one-time Pinochet stooge - who carries himself with the starched seriousness of an old-fashioned suitor. He's seized on as a new boyfriend, only he proves himself to be a man of little mettle, an obsequious father, and a terrified avoider of conflict. He's less Mr. Right, more Mr. Right Now. Eventually, she must ask herself if, even in the most desperate of times, this is a man worthy of her love, or whether it's better to just go it alone. Lelio wrote the role as homage to García, and she's up to the task: able to fully inhabit Gloria, make her feel achingly human. It's rare to find a character of such depth in cinema, let alone one that's a sexually-active, pot-smokin', bender-takin' lady in her late-50s. Not only has Lelio sketched a unique titular character, but Gloria even has an instant-classic scene, in which hell hath no fury like a scorned-woman with a paintball gun.